open impiety; a Kentucky argument. But there was no remedy. The Inquisition was not now in authority; its instruments of torture had been destroyed; its fires had been extinguished; and so the Englishman got the best of the argument, and retired peaceably to his own home.
At his house the Englishman was waited upon by the Alcalde, who informed him that he had been ordered to take the wife, and that he dared not disobey. But he suggested a method by which the order might be evaded. This was to send the wife every day, at a certain hour, into a neighbor's house, and at that hour the officers would come and search his dwelling, and would accordingly report "Not found." This farce continued to be enacted daily for nearly three months, when the husband, becoming tired of it, wrote to the Bishop of New Orleans an account of the manner in which his house had been besieged, and in due time received a reply from that excellent ecclesiastic, stating that he would satisfactorily arrange the business; at the same time expressing his regrets that he had not before been informed of the condition of affairs.
In the mean time, another priest in the town chanced to be discussing the all-absorbing question of the day, the heretic marriage, and unfortunately happened to remark that a marriage by an American priest was not a lawful marriage. This was too much for our Englishman, and he answered it—as an Englishman is accustomed to answer insulting remarks in relation to the affairs of his household—not by a single blow, but by such a pommeling as never a priest had sustained since the Conquest. Yet there was no earthquake on the occasion, and Orizaba was not discomposed at witnessing such a shocking act of impiety.
Time moved on, and with it came the parish priest to validate the marriage. But our Englishman would not be validated. No, not he; and when the priest began to mutter and to move his hands, the Englishman's blood was up, and so was his foot, and this ceremony was terminated according to a formula not laid down in any prayer-book now